Spending a rainy Saturday night curled up in front of Dodgeball or the first season of Six Feet Under is great and all, but what if you want to find Michael Auder’s “Polaroid Cocaine,” a five-minute, 1993 video montage of images that “dwell on the themes of death, destruction, and desire,” accompanied by cabaret music? (Auder has been described by Ed Halter in the Village Voice as “an embedded reporter within Andy Warhol’s pocket world of eager exhibitionists.”) Or how about Lawrence Weiner’s 1976 “A Bit of Matter and a Little Bit More,” a 20-minute cult classic with Weiner’s trademark texts superimposed on close-ups of three pairs of unidentified (but reportedly recognizable) curators having sex? Organized by artists Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda and opening February 8 at Harvard’s Sert Gallery (on the third floor of the Carpenter Center), “E-FLUX VIDEO RENTAL (EVR)” brings a library of some 700 unusual works of video art to town. The works, selected by an extensive gang of renowned curators and critics, are available to watch in the specially designed exhibition space. Or you can fill out a membership form and contract and then check things out and take them home, without charge.

EVR was first installed on New York’s Ludlow Street in 2004, and has since traveled to, among other places, Amsterdam, Seoul, and Miami. Vidokle and Aranda themselves will be on hand to talk about the project at 6 pm on opening night. Throughout EVR’s Cambridge run, a series of interesting characters will be invited to present curated screenings; check the Carpenter Center’s link to E-Flux’s Web site for the full schedule, which is still being developed.

Physical and emotional ties that bind are under scrutiny in “ONLY CONNECT,” which opens February 2 at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery. Video and new-media artists Smith/Stewart (the team name of duo Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart), Lucas Michael, Chantal Zakari, Jillian McDonald (whose obsession with Billy Bob Thornton is cleverly documented), and Kurt Wahlstrom look at relationships among friends, family, lovers, strangers, and various combinations thereof. At the same time, in the Mills’ Project Space, “CATHY MCLAURIN: SOCK MONKEY KAMA SUTRA” has paintings that look at the complexities of love from a different angle.

Devotional images from the early 16th century seldom elicit a response that could be described as “edgy” — but then, contemporary Bolognese artist Luigi Ontani, whose “SCULPTURE & MEMORY: WORKS FROM THE GARDNER AND BY LUIGI ONTANI” opens at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on February 9, is an unusual character. Ontani is known for inserting his own body into various historical contexts in his work; for this show, he provides a new way of looking at devotional imagery, using his own face and physical self.

Time out of mind Luisa Rabbia created a slow-moving video work that offers a kind of travelogue of her own journey through Isabella Stewart Gardner's historic scrapbooks.

People get ready Fourteen New England artists/artist teams hook up to produce a variety of interconnecting installations.

Road trips In the fall of 1883, Isabella Stewart Gardner — more than a decade before she would develop her museum on Boston’s Fenway — traveled to China.

Sketchy Art — like music, physics, literature, dance, and other creative pursuits — rarely springs forth from the imagination in its final form.

Lighting history On January 1, 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner invited 300 guests to a private concert by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the opening of her new museum on the Fenway. After performances of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, the mirrored doors of the first-floor concert room rolled open to reveal an extraordinary vision.

Wanting more After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.

Tiny heavy animals The traditional way of being seated in ancient China, prior to the introduction of Western-style furniture, was on a floor mat, possibly anchored at its four corners by decorative weights.

Kraftwerk The same early-20th-century Vienna that eventually produced Freud, Schoenberg, and Wittgenstein was also the site of a renaissance in arts and crafts.

Gardner growing pains Isabella Stewart Gardner’s will is explicit: the experience she choreographed for visitors to her museum must continue in perpetuity.

Stolen By buying up her favorite artworks and displaying them for posterity in her museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner removed them from the sphere of commerce and preserved them for the enjoyment of all.

Don’t leave me this way Leaves lead a wild life, and each leaf’s physical structure reflects both its individual biography — revealing the pathways, for example, of insects that have eaten their way across a leaf’s surface.

THE NATURE OF THE BEAST | September 10, 2008 In the world of graphic novelist Kevin Hooyman, whose show opens at Proof Gallery on September 13, packed line drawings take you deep into strange and fantastical scenes.

I AM I SAID | September 03, 2008 Tufts University Art Gallery presents “Empire And Its Discontents,” which opens September 15 with work by 11 artists tied to previously colonized regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.